Author of Circumference of Darkness (entitled Maximum Impact in the UK)

Chapter 11

Jeannie has begun her terrorist hunt in earnest, but IRIN is also turning up some disturbing indications of prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.

With surprising speed, many thousands of suspects were, in fact, rounded up and detained shortly after the attacks in New York and Washington. In those early days, there was almost universal support among the people for this widespread dragnet. Reports had begun to surface of additional threats, and there was a very real feeling that more attacks were on the way, from terrorist cells embedded across the country, just as (we were learning) the 9/11 hijackers had been. And just as Jeannie found in the story, some additional troubling undercurrents were beginning to emerge as well.

If you’re wondering, all of the anomalies listed there in the chapter are actual 9/11 oddities that have been uncovered in one way or another, and the list is far from comprehensive. There are more later on in the book; here, I wanted to confine Jeannie’s discoveries to some highlights that would have been available to her computer system at that time, but which had not yet reached the general public. (The only details I changed were those surrounding that art-class picture that depicted the attacks the day before. For better or worse, with a child involved, I didn’t see any reason to be too specifically accurate in that case.)

The strange downfall of WTC building 7 has troubled many researchers since the day it happened. Many buildings around towers 1 and 2 sustained serious damage on 9/11, but WTC 7 came down late in the afternoon, straight down into its own footprint, unlike any other similarly-constructed building before or since, excluding the Twin Towers that fell on the same day. Controlled demolition, say some. Of course, since this happened on the very day of the attacks, that would mean that a great deal of advance preparation would have needed to occur. There are those who believe that this clip alone proves WTC 7 was brought down, or “pulled,” on cue and under control of the authorities. And if this building collapse was planned and carried out in that manner, what does that mean for the rest of the official story?

The screen-grab above contains a link to a video that surfaced in 2007. Needless to say, this footage added fuel to the WTC 7 controversy. Evidently, the BBC was reporting the collapse of the building (referred to in the video as “the Salomon Brothers building”), nearly half-an-hour before it came down. The intact building is actually visible behind the reporter in the video. Sadly (or suspiciously, depending on your alignment), the feed is interrupted by transmission problems before the structure finally does come down minutes later, as predicted.

There will always be unanswered questions. And for this point in the story, it’s probably better if I just leave it at that.